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tim_d_wagner
Reviews
Billable Hours (2006)
Don't try to try
Billable Hours is a great workplace comedy. The show follows a group of lawyers at the hopefully fictional firm of Fagen and Harrison. It's can be crude, it's often crash, it relies on a lot of old stand clichés, nurses stereotypes, and it does so perfectly.
While there are a few episodes that seem to drag a bit, most are watchable time and time again. The writers are not afraid to push the characters. Sadly the show is not popular enough to use great lines like "swallowing is 9/10th of the law" to any but your closest friends who will give you a chance to explain or show a clip.
The cast seems to have genuine chemistry and the actors never come across and trying too hard and seem to throw themselves at what is often very odd material.
Watch the gang waste their time and torture each other and you will enjoy it.
The Neighbors (2012)
Needs a few more episodes to settle in.
After only a few episodes this series is proving hard to pin down. The premise is tried and true, but they have tried to have fun with it and it has potential.
So far there is little continuity in the relationships or actions between episodes. Not sure if this is re-tooling, shooting out of sequence, or just poor writing.
There are a few mixes of humour styles that tend to play well and should appeal to a wide audience, but they are inconsistent. Not sure if this is more retooling, or trying to stay fresh. Some times it feels like they are trying to over nurse a weak joke rather than cut it.
There are some big gaps if you start asking yourself how the aliens would know "A" but not know "B", but if you keep an open mind and just laugh along you may find this series entertaining.
Shania: A Life in Eight Albums (2005)
A disappointment
I found this movie's title to be very misleading. Rather than A Life in Eight Albums I saw Eilleen: The early years. Less a story and more a poorly assembled collection of glimpses that the viewer is roughly shoved through. Many simplified and stereotyped. It comes across as an unsophisticated low budget attempt to show moments from the story of the woman who will become Shania. The film hops and drags through the first hour. While it does move better towards the end, it is not a significant improvement. It's occasionally hard to follow what is happening or who people are unless you have some familiarity with her early life already. Hard to stick it out to the end. A few of the acting performances are good, but few are consistent. The sound is of decent quality, but the music used is basic and repetitive.
Transformers (2007)
I'd see it again but there was lots of room for improvement
Movie is great concept, but story stalls at a few points, character is generally good but some characters go "missing" along the way. The camera work on the special effect shots seems deliberately blurry and jumpy and really detract from this being a great movie, but that could just be me getting "old" and not liking the "new" style. It seemed to me for many of the action scenes it was just blurry bouncy camera shots with the occasional shot or explosion to break the sequence up but it was like was that a robot, an elbow, who knows. As a consequence you never seem to get a clear view of the robots in action, but there are a few times when they "pose" for the camera. I look forward to the likely sequel, and hope I will get to "see" more of the action.